


the fisher king's son

by spikeface



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Mermaid, Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-04
Updated: 2011-10-04
Packaged: 2017-10-24 07:25:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/260649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spikeface/pseuds/spikeface
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>charles is a merman. au, references to trauma.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the fisher king's son

The diamond woman tosses him off the ship casually—like he's already a corpse.

Maybe he is.

\+ + +

The water is black and near frozen, pulling him down almost as fast as the ship. He can't see a damn thing, suspended in the wet and darkness, but he can feel the metal of the ship in his pores. It claws at him, lashes around him like a sea creature, sticky and malevolent.

He's going to kill Schmidt. It doesn't matter that it's going to kill him in the process, as long as Schmidt dies. Every muscle is tensed with that one thought, the air rushing out of him with the need for it. The thought consumes him, fires up his frozen body and shoots out his fingertips.

He's sinking— _succeeding_.

\+ + +

Then warm arms clasp around him.

\+ + +

_Let it go._

It's a feeling, a sudden bright bloom of _other_ in his mind, the oddly tempting desire to let the submarine escape. He tries to shake it off, it doesn't make any sense. He _wants_ this—this ship just beyond his reach—pulling just too hard for him to hold on.

_Let it go, Erik._

It's not his name exactly, rather a bone deep acknowledgment of him, shaking him down to his numb toes—this certainty that someone else is holding him, that someone else knows who he is, that he's not alone.

He lets the submarine escape.

\+ + +

He wakes up on the pier, soaked to the bone and alone.

Back in his filthy motel, he licks his wounds and shudders out a ragged bout of pneumonia. For three days he dreams about a man with no name, with warm hands, warmer thoughts.

As his body mends, realizations seep in. The diamond woman, the others on the ship—they're like him, Schmidt's creatures—Frankenstein's monsters. There could be others out there— _more_.

His savior might be one of them.

\+ + +

Erik goes back to the pier and steals a boat, opens all of the locks and turns on the ignition, handles the metal engine as easy as breathing. His thoughts are focused wholly on what it had felt like to be grasped in dark waters.

It's a foggy morning as he leaves, good cover for a theft but terrible for conducting his own hunts. Erik takes a deep breath and makes himself wait. The war taught him endurance, but its bloody, vengeful aftermath has taught him patience.

He sits on the gray water with all the equanimity of a man who has accepted his own destiny, Schmidt's coin rolling between his fingers.

It lasts four hours.

\+ + +

The water ripples.

A head rises out of the water and Erik leans over the side -- bright blue eyes stare back at him.

He's more alien in the light: too blue, too smooth, a scaly sheen even on his skin. His tail is blurry under the water, swishing idly left to right. He's a monster. Other people would be terrified of him, would want to capture him and lock him away and twist him from the inside out.

Erik's never met someone like him before.

"Hello," he begins roughly, too soft. He doesn't want to spook him. He does want to reach out and pluck him, haul him onto the boat just to feel the weight of him in his hands, to know that he's real. "Who are you?"

The creature tilts his head, raises his aristocratically arched eyebrows. The voice steps lightly into his head: _Guess._

Erik doesn't like guessing games.

The creature smiles—splashes him.

" _Tell_ me, or—" Erik realizes belatedly how stupid he sounds: this isn't one of the men he hunts. "Or I suppose I'll just have to name you myself."

The creature slips back into his mind, draws something there that's friendly but nebulous, murky as the ocean floor. Erik's mind slowly molds it into shape—a name. "Charles."

The creature—Charles—nods.

"Hello, Charles." He tucks the name away with the other ponderous things in his life. "I'm Erik."

\+ + +

He begins to rent rowboats.

Given the precious little money left in his briefcase these days, Erik's budget doesn't exactly allow for it, but the constant thefts draw attention. Once upon a time Erik wouldn't have cared who knew what he was doing.

He was unstoppable, inevitable as the grim reaper.

Now he finds himself secretive.

No one else can know about Charles. He is for Erik alone.

It's a heady thought, fraught with novelty.

\+ + +

Charles is different from the other monsters he's met.

Erik isn't sure Charles was ever human. If he was, he's forgotten it since.

Charles slices up to the boat whenever Erik goes onto the sea. He finds Erik unerringly as a shark when there's blood in the water. He'll cock his head invitingly, his mind tickling along Erik's as though to lure him into the water.

Erik has read stories about people who live in the sea, how easily they pull a man under.

Charles might be the most dangerous creature he has ever known.

\+ + +

Charles likes Erik's watch a great deal.

Every week, without fail, Charles pulls himself up against the side of the boat, perches blithely next to Erik on his elbows, and reaches for it. He undoes the straps with remarkable concentration, ignoring his wet hair falling into his eyes, unblinking as water slides over his pupils.

After the watch, he moves to Erik's hand—one of the few things they have almost exactly in common—but Charles still handles it like it's made of wheels and cogs he's never seen before. His hand stills as it comes to Erik's wrist, tapping against the ropey veins while Erik holds his breath.

Erik hasn't let anyone touch him since the war ended, but Charles is different—he's not a Nazi or even a human. His hands aren't like theirs.

Charles must feel that Erik would allow it, but he always shies away from anywhere beyond Erik's wrist, reaches out with his mind instead. Sometimes his questions are ones Erik can answer: _What do you do, when you're not with me?_

"I hunt," Erik says, which is true, even though he doesn't mean in the same way that Charles does, when he says he does the same.

\+ + +

_Can every human control metal like you?_ Charles asks when he sees Erik twiddling his coin in the space between his fingers.

Erik's vaguely alarmed to find that it's about the most he can handle at the moment, his anger banked so low in him that the metal is almost heavy in his mind.

"No," he says, and the control comes rushing back as he remembers Schmidt explaining that Erik was _different_ , that he was _special_. "I'm the only one in the world."

\+ + +

One day Charles asks: _Is it true that flowers on land have a scent?_

Erik speaks six languages but he's not terribly good with words.

He pictures it instead, building all of the memories into something Charles can latch onto. Charles listens rapt, holding onto the edge of the boat tightly, his tail flicking like a cat's, the voluminous fins lifting above the water and then gently splashing back down. He has a habit of delving the depth's of Erik's mind with a few earnest questions, until Erik finds himself suddenly pouring out every memory he has of summers in Heidelberg, before his father had been fired from the university and they had fled.

He doesn't remember it especially well, but it's one of the brightest he still has, and he wants Charles to have it along with the memory of flowers.

When he's done telling that story his throat is tight and pained as if he had told it all the normal way, but Charles looks as though every word had ripped a scale off of him. His eyes are haunted, and he reaches out tentatively, lets his hand rest against Erik's.

Erik lets himself be rocked back and forth in the rowboat, Charles next to him, and feels almost content.

\+ + +

Two days later, in a little log cabin north of the city, Erik smells honeysuckle outside of the house.

 _Charles would like this_ , he thinks, and for long seconds afterward, he cannot recall how to summon metal. There are two men in the house who liked to torture children, who used to tell him that he was a trifecta of every disgusting thing on this earth.

When he regains his rage, he makes their deaths last a long time.

\+ + +

He stays in his room by the sea even after he's decided never to return.

Schmidt isn't there to test his resolve anymore, watching impassively to see whether he fails or not. Erik has his own self-control now. He trains and plans and remembers that he's angry, why he's angry—even though every night he dreams of Charles, the swish of his fins, how gently he held Erik as he turned his hand over, ran his fingertips over Erik's knuckles.

\+ + +

One night, Erik lies down and can't stop thinking of Charles while he remembers why he wants to kill everyone who ever hurt him. He thinks of Charles alone in the nighttime water, swimming in frenetic circles and wondering where Erik is, whether he's hurt or dead or mad at him, why he won't come back, won't he _please_ come back, Charles will do whatever it takes to make him come back.

Erik can't help but remember when he was that lonely, how hard he had begged for anyone to come to him—his father and mother at first, and then foreign soldiers, and then his guards, and finally Schmidt, just so he wouldn't be alone anymore, by himself in a plastic room.

He hates Charles a little for making him remember, but he gets up with the sun and rents another boat the next day.

\+ + +

Charles appears before him the second he's out of sight of the pier.

He's a sudden blur in front of Erik as he leaps out of the water heavily enough to splash a bucket's worth of water into the boat. He grabs Erik's arms hard enough to leave bruises.

Charles is so small, so tentative and gentle that Erik didn't care—had _forgotten_ —that Charles was dangerous, a predator in his own right even without his ability to slip into other people's minds. And yet, here he is, out of the water completely, handing himself over to Erik and running wet hands over Erik's face.

_You were gone a long time._

Erik panics with how much he _wants_ this creature in front of him, as much as he wants Schmidt—but he doesn't want to kill Charles, doesn't even want to hurt him. He just wants to keep holding him, to have him at his side, to be sure that he won't leave.

"I'm here now," he says roughly.

Charles' tail twitches, silly and impractical now that he's in the boat. Even seals can waddle along on their flippers, but Charles is helpless now that he's out of the water.

Erik could do anything he liked with him.

He sets Charles back in gently, careful not to tip the boat over, and Charles does somersaults of pleasure. Erik watches him, twiddles his coin idly over his head, pondering how much it means to him.

The banker in France promised him all of his targets' funds if he kept his mouth shut about where they'd been stashed before. Nazi gold had never tempted Erik before, but perhaps it would be a worthy investment. He could buy property nearby, have a pool built for Charles, clear water and clear glass so Erik could drink in the sight of him whenever he wanted. Erik wonders how much he could forget, if he had Charles to watch all the time—maybe he wouldn't care that he didn't have metal anymore, if he had Charles.

The idea scatters and the coin drops as Charles leans up against the side of the boat, tipping it.

"What is it?"

Charles holds out a hand for the coin.

Erik gives it to him, feeling irrationally disarmed.

Charles turns it over in the sun, then grins, and flips it back at him. Erik barely catches it before Charles reachs out with both hands, open and entreating. _Come with me_.

The water is cold when he gets in, but Charles' hands are burning hot.

He takes a deep breath, and down they go.

\+ + +

Swimming has never come naturally to Erik, although Schmidt had given him lessons in that like he'd given him lessons in everything else. He doesn't need them now: Charles pulls him along almost too fast, gleeful, his wide grin hazy but visible through the water. Charles is slighter than him but he acts as though Erik weighs nothing, like he's made of gossamer instead of iron.

The water goes on and on as Charles pulls him along, and they don't even reach the bottom. Charles stops, holds him close and gently turns Erik's head as he points down at the ocean floor.

Erik can't see the gold, but when he reaches out he can feel it vibrating, dull glimmers on the ocean floor. There's a lot of it. He can feel the ship next to it, although only bits and pieces. The rest must be wood; it's an old ship. Old money.

Charles tilts Erik's head again, this time to face him, and then seals his mouth against Erik's.

He hadn't realized how much he needed air until Charles is breathing into him, patient and endlessly giving, letting Erik grip with his hands, pull with his lungs. He wants to keep sucking in even after his lungs are full. Charles tastes like salt and some unnamable sweetness. Erik's sure he's floating, time suspended in the water along with them, but then they break the surface, their mouths still locked together. There's air all around them, in his eyes and his nose, but he doesn't care, takes and takes until he's breathless again.

He pants when Charles finally pulls away.

Charles smiles.

\+ + +

Stopping a submarine going at full power is beyond Erik's ken, but lifting up a bit of sunken treasure is easy—especially with Charles in the water beside his boat, encouraging with his thalassic eyes, open and serene.

There's a veritable castle with an astounding amount of acreage relatively close to the coast, with a lake on the property and a new pool. He has the chlorinated water replaced with seawater immediately, and then stalks through the empty rooms like the beast Schmidt made of him, wrestling with his options.

He has other things he should be doing, now that he has the funds. Even after his purchases he's wealthy enough for a hundred hunts around the globe, for every last man or woman or monster that had ever worked for Schmidt. Prudence demands he leave immediately, and the house encourages it—dark, forbidding, filled with someone else's memories.

He heads for the ocean.

\+ + +

There's no need to procure a boat this time. Charles is sitting on one of the uneven rocks lining the beach.

He has legs.

There's blood all over them, sticky and half dry, as though he'd been sitting in it for hours. He flinches as Erik calls his name, even though he's done it so many times before—half the words he says these days are Charles' name, when he's not telling Schmidt's men their list of crimes before he judges them guilty.

"Erik," Charles says, betraying himself at the end of the name, the way his mouth curves over it like a dolphin's clicking.

"Charles." He wonders what his own voice gives away. "You have legs."

Charles brightens, his smile shaky but resolved. "I have—do you like them?"

 _I love them_. He wonders if Charles hears that, and finds he does not mind if he has.

"How long will you stay?"

Charles lets him pull him up, beams with pride as he stands on shaky, bloody legs. His hair has begun to dry, curls gently in a nimbus around his head, like he's descended instead of ascended to meet him. "As long as I can."

\+ + +

By the time they make it to the pool at the back of the mansion, Charles has grown slightly more accustomed to walking, but Erik keeps a supportive arm around his waist anyway.

"I was going to invite you to stay here," he explains as Charles stares into the pool, the clear waters glimmering blue onto his face. In truth he hadn't planned how to get Charles into the pool; Charles has been obliging, but Erik is a man of force.

"It's lovely." Charles' human accent is vaguely British. "But I can't go in."

"The water isn't to your liking?"

"Not at all, it's wonderful, but I—the rules are that I cannot do anything I did before, like swim, or I'll return to the way I was before."

Erik hadn't even considered that.

"And anyway, I've had enough of the water for now. Would you be so kind as to show the rest of the house?"

"As you wish."

They go through the porticos and drawing rooms and up and down the staircases and into the kitchens because Charles doesn't understand what they are when Erik tries to explain. Charles touches everything and smells everything and when they find the ballroom he tries to make Erik teach him to dance until Erik explains that he doesn't know how. The house is alive in a way it wasn't before: the clock rings out unctuous greetings; the lights flicker hello.

\+ + +

It isn't easy.

Charles isn't used to living on land, and Erik isn't used to living at all.

Both of them have to get used to Erik's behemoth of a house, and neither of them have lived together. Even in this place, with a whole wonderland of rooms to get lost in, Erik goes almost mad with Charles' constant presence. He watches him walk through the gardens from a room upstairs, hears him singing in delightful off key as he burns things in the kitchen, sits with him in a drawing room and cannot get away from every ruffle of a page being turned as Charles runs his fingers over the letters and skims for the pictures. Charles still smells like he did before, salt and fish and biting wind, and every room he enters smells like that, turns a little warmer because of him.

Erik rusts with want of him, more and more each time Charles looks up at him and speaks instead of kissing him.

Charles is always looking at him, with the same eyes he had when he was a merman, and Erik can feel himself growing addicted. He sweats through his withdrawal every night that he returns to the master bedroom while Charles curls up in a guest room—or anywhere else he likes, since he seems to have made it a personal mission to explore the rest of the house, sees no difference between a bed and a carpet, and spares no thought for whether Erik will trip on him on the way downstairs in the morning. He wears lots of clothes all the time, even when it's hot enough to make Erik forgo, complains that too much air on his skin makes him itch.

Erik says nothing to that. He'd happily say nothing at all, spend his days doing nothing but watching, but Charles won't stop asking questions about everything— _why does fire burn? why do people need stools when chairs are more comfortable? why would anyone ever eat toast?_ Erik doesn't know and he's never quite sure how to explain it and he doesn't care. He learned a long time ago that "how" is a much more fruitful question than "why."

"That's just the way things _are_ ," he replies, when Charles asks him why windows face outside and not into other rooms as well.

"Fine," Charles snaps, and stalks off. Erik watches him go, remembers how Charles was in the water. He's moved past coltish awkwardness with his legs, but he still swishes as he walks like his hips are what power him. His eyes are as blue as ever, his skin still tinged with the ocean, but he looks different on land, out of place in this stuffy old luxury.

Erik is sure he was a prince below the waves.

\+ + +

Later, Erik finds Charles in his room, staring at his legs like they're foreign bodies, and then out the window, where the pool is.

Erik's heart leaps at the thought of him swimming in it, turning back into the creature that Erik could keep where he wanted, that never asked any questions but where Erik had been, when he could see him again.

But the thought stumbles at the prospect of Charles swimming away, prods him into saying, "I was rude earlier. I apologize."

"That's all right." Charles still seems uneasy. He's not looking at Erik, eyes trained on the pool. Erik wants him to look at him again, needs it more than he needs the comforting solidity of metal in his hand.

"I know things are very different for you now than they were before."

He gets a nod.

"What was it like, to live in the sea?" Erik imagines how free he must have been, in his endless blue kingdom, tumbling with dolphins and communing with vast schools of fish, lulled to sleep by whale song and nudged awake by otters.

Charles shrugs. "Lonely."

"But not anymore," Erik says, much too quickly. Schmidt would be disappointed at how much he's shown his hand.

"No, not anymore," Charles agrees softly, eyes warm and a bit mocking. "But I want to see more. Are we very far from the city?"

"New York? Not very." The coin shivers in his pocket at the thought of other people seeing Charles, talking to him, possibly touching him in the dense crowd of the street.

"I want to go." Erik can almost feel the desire in his mind, painfully earnest and impossible to resist. He wonders if Charles has ever had to lie or dissemble in his life—fish are such honest creatures. Charles has eyes like them, round and translucent, perceptive.

"Of course," he says, and tries very hard not to think too loudly: _as long as you come back with me_.

\+ + +

Erik makes reservations at a restaurant while they wander in and out of stores. He only knows the place because one of his old targets used to go there, and Erik had spent three nights there, at a table in the corner, watching the man stuff his face and hoping no one noticed his forks trembling.

Charles is fascinated by their silverware. He picks everything up and rearranges it until their food comes, pushes it around his plate when he arrives. He can't stop looking at the other people in the restaurant. Erik wonders what he hears from them, what cruel thoughts slide across his.

He himself can feel their eyes sliding over him, as eloquent as if they were shouting. The world considers it progress that now people only call Erik a Jew and a queer and a mutant in their heads. At least Charles, a telepath, will agree with him: thoughts speak as loudly as words.

"Would you fancy a drink instead?"

Charles looks down uncertainly at his glass of water, frowns at him.

 "In a pub. It would be more casual, if you're uncomfortable here."

"I'm not uncomfortable," Charles says, too quickly.

"Well, I am," he says, getting up. He hasn't admitted to any pain since his mother died, but he'll come close, for Charles.

\+ + +

The pub is noisy, filled with smoke and laughter and no one drunk enough yet to try smashing their faces in.

Charles asks a man what his cigarette is and gets the name of the brand and an offer to try. Erik nods when Charles looks at him, his whole face glowing with a sense of adventure—over _what_ , over some stupid cigarette that smells like the ones his guards used to smoke.

He put them out on their eyes before he snapped their necks.

The smoke makes Charles hack and choke, go red from his hairline to his throat and maybe below. Everyone laughs and claps him on the back, crowds around him until Erik is completely shut out from their circle.

Charles looks for him through the faces smiling at him, gestures him over expansively. People keep giving him drinks to try, and he downs them all graciously, like all of them are old friends who have been waiting for him all this time. Charles fits in so easily with them, as smoothly as he'd glided through the water when he'd had fins. It's Erik who feels out of his element, watching them laughing and touching.

He would let Charles touch him. He already has.

He could learn to laugh with him.

He needs to leave before he breaks someone's fingers.

The beer taps rattle when he settles at the bar, so he waits until they still, and comes back with drinks—only to realize that Charles isn't there. He isn't anywhere at the bar, or in any of the booths, or outside. He finds Charles in the loo, next to the sink, slightly hunched over himself. He looks up when Erik comes in, the relief on his face so apparent that Erik almost reaches out.

"Is something the matter?"

Charles admits stiffly, "There are a lot of people out there."

"I thought you liked it." Erik will take him away—lock him up where no one ever has to touch him again.

"I do like it," Charles insists. "But they're very noisy, spouting off every thought that comes into their heads. With you, it's—quiet."

"So I have no thoughts at all."

Charles laughs, mouth open and beautiful. "You know perfectly well that's not what I meant. You don't talk as much. It's intriguing, frustrating sometimes, but it's also... soothing."

Erik has been called many things, but never "soothing."

Charles must mistake his silence for disapproval, because he clasps Erik's forearm. "It was meant to be a compliment."

"I am aware," Erik says. And then, awkwardly, "Thank you."

Charles has such ridiculously large eyes. They're the antithesis of his telepathy, revealing his own thoughts while he steals others' away.

He runs inhumanly smooth fingertips along Erik's arm, ticklish and electrifying as he strokes the sinews. Erik wants him with such intensity that he almost panics, because now Charles will be taken away. He's learned that. But Charles keeps stroking Erik's arm—like he's trying to calm him, like he doesn't have newfound words or that marvelous mind of his, can only communicate with touch.

Then his thumb dips down, along the tattooed numbers.

The brass doorknob wrenches right off the door, clatters to the ground. Charles whips his hand away.

"No," Erik snaps, sharper than he'd intended. Charles tenses further. Erik reminds himself that Charles is out of his element.

But so is he. He remembers the last time someone had stroked him. It wasn't like this.

"I'm sorry," Charles says.

 _Don't be_ , Erik thinks, and wills Charles to hear him. Charles still looks unsettled, and Erik doesn't know how else to say it, so he kisses him.

The first time, the water had been a womb around them, protective and muting. Now anyone could walk in, see Erik's teeth sinking into Charles' lips, see Charles pressing back into him urgently. Erik wants them to see this, wants them to know that Charles is his, and just as fiercely he wants no one to ever see Charles again, for Charles to be his alone.

"Let me take you home," he whispers. He doesn't know if Charles hears the rest of what he's thinking.

He hopes so, because Charles says, "Yes."

\+ + +

He can barely hold himself back during the drive to the mansion.

The car keeps going faster and faster, the metal pedal slamming down into the floor of the car every time he looks over at Charles. He doesn't understand why, since anger is the last thing on his mind right now, with everyone else gone but Charles—Charles who kisses him when they get out of the car, who pulls him through the door and laughs when Erik curses a blue streak trying to find their room.

He could have him anywhere, Charles is nipping at his ear and trying to push him against the wall, but Erik wants to do it _right_ , wants Charles in his arms in his bed to balance out the first time they found each other, when Erik was in Charles' arms in the water.

He tears off Charles' clothes as soon as he pushes him past the threshold to his room. Charles laughs and lets him, tries to pull off Erik's clothes in turn. Erik shrugs off his coat with Charles' help but then gets distracted by the sliver of skin peaking between buttons. It shouldn't matter; he's seen Charles' chest before, but this is different. Now it's here, with the rest of his things, protected from everything the world has to offer. Charles seems to understand his urgency, turns his energy to helping Erik take his clothes off.

His stomach is still smooth, flat where it should dip into a belly button—visible proof that he never had a human mother.

How Erik envies him that.

Charles shimmies out of his trousers and flops back onto the bed. Erik follows more slowly, settles on the edge of the bed so he can watch. He takes in the sight of him, can't stop looking at his legs: the fine, cautious hair, the hard muscle. They're ordinary human legs, fascinating because they're Charles', because he grew them to come after Erik.

"How did you do it?"

Charles smiles. "Button, zipper, then I pulled them down. I can teach you, if you like."

"You know what I mean."

The smile fades, and Erik's sorry for that but he wants to know, needs to. "I cut myself open."

 _I know what it's like to be cut open_. He would show him the scars if he could. Schmidt had healed them over, turned his destructive power into something gentle, warm. Erik wishes, for the first time, that he could be more like him—that he could give that to Charles.

He nips Charles' knee instead.

Charles gasps, so Erik kisses where he'd bitten, open mouthed and fervent, and feels Charles shudder. He's moving then, reaching out for Erik, one hand on his shoulder, but Erik pushes him back down, crawls further onto the bed so he can face Charles. He grasps each thigh and spreads them—slowly, deliberately as a knife.

Charles is _his_ , as surely as anyone else he's hunted.

He's never caught anything he didn't want to destroy before.

"I've never—" Charles cuts off with a frustrated little noise. "There was never anyone else. Obviously."

Erik shushes him. Of course he knows that. His own experience flickers in his head, and given how close they are, how much they're touching now, there's no way Charles doesn't see it. Erik hopes it doesn't frighten him—that Charles won't think that's what's going to happen to him too.

"I can make it good," he promises.

Charles nods, trusting. He's so hopelessly, stupidly naive.

"You're over-thinking this," Charles says, laughing a little. "Talk more or kiss me again."

"I really want to fuck you." That makes Charles' eyes widen, his jaw clench, so he adds hurriedly, "But we don't have to. There's a lot we could do."

"No. I want—" It rapidly becomes clear that Charles has almost no idea what he's asking for.

"Easy," Erik keeps repeating. "Relax. Easy, now. Breathe. _Alles ist gut._ "

He has to say more, because Charles still looks scared and Erik can't stand it—but these are the only words he knows, the ones that were said to him. He can't stop touching Charles, holding him all over, pinning him to the bed because he's here and he's Erik's and just the thought of letting him go makes all of Erik's muscles seize around him.

The iron bed rattles.

"You're hurting me," Charles says, his voice flinching away even though his legs are still locked tight around Erik's torso, one hand cupping his neck as the other runs through his hair, soothing.

"Sorry," Erik whispers. It's so easy to say in the dark, with no one but Charles to hear him. He doesn't know how else to do it, doesn't know how to say what he wants, wishes desperately that Charles would just take it from him.

"It's all right," Charles says. "I'm not going anywhere, I promise. I'm all yours."

Erik has been lied to before.

\+ + +

Afterwards, Erik mumbles against Charles' neck: "I'm sorry I hurt you."

Charles strokes his hair.

His skin is raw where Erik had twisted his grip on him, where he'd rubbed with his rough cheeks. He stinks of sweat and come, the slight rankness of fear. There are cuts on his lips, red marks on his neck, bite marks on his thighs, bruises on his arms and ribs and hips.

The iron in them hums under his fingertips, responsive. Charles makes a soft sound of pain when he presses too hard, rolls closer to him and snuffles back down. His ribs buffet gently against Erik, expanding and collapsing.

Erik watches him sleep and feels like he's the sea creature, born in the depths.

\+ + +

Their life molds around them slowly, like sturdy leather shoes.

Charles discovers the joys of reading, spends long hours stumbling through T. H. White while Erik lies with his head in his lap, Charles' hands running through his hair. They're beginning to roughen: a callus against his ring finger where he braces his shaky pen, scraped palms from his lingering need to climb everything. He sits properly in chairs and knows how to use a fork and he spends every night in Erik's bed.

Erik hasn't moved so much as a penny in weeks. He chains his power up, stores it away for his last effort. There's only one more thing he has to do, one more umbilical tie he has to cut from his old life.

"Why does he matter so much?" It's the last question Charles asks, but he asks it over and over.

Erik shuts him up with a kiss. His rhetoric has always been tactile.

He loves having Charles' cock in his mouth, tasting the part of him that's still sea-salty, feeling his plum tight skin twitch whenever Erik does something particularly clever with his tongue. Charles is thrillingly responsive, kicking his legs and arching his neck whenever Erik licks him, running his hands through Erik's hair in alternating praise and begging and grasping fruitlessly for control whenever Erik decides to hold him down and take his time.

Schmidt would love him, he knows instinctively, with the way Charles reacts so totally to any stimulus. The thought makes Erik growl around Charles' cock, and then swallow greedily as Charles comes from the vibrations.

Charles is the one thing of his that Schmidt will never ruin.

"Come here," Charles demands afterwards. Erik complies happily, settling his whole body over Charles until he squirms enough that Erik rolls over, content to sleep with an arm and leg slung over Charles, his chin pressed into his shoulder and his nose buried in his neck.

It takes Erik weeks to allow Charles to suck his cock in turn; he won't fuck Charles' throat, make him gag and choke, but he doesn't like lying back and letting people do things to him. But Charles has a way about him, covers his stomach with warm hands until his muscles stop tensing, kisses his thighs until they open. Charles is an amateur but enthusiastic cocksucker. The first time is a painful tease. Charles noses through his pubic hair, breathes over his balls, kisses the head of his cock like he's just another room to explore.

"Come on," Erik finally groans.

Charles is comically surprised when he looks up—a bloody scholar interrupted in his studies—but he turns mirthful when he realizes the state he has Erik in. "Like that, do you."

Erik tries to pull him back in.

"Tell me," Charles insists.

"If you want it so much then _take_ it from me." The prospect is thrilling and terrifying. Erik is too happy now to make a pin roll; Charles could take any of his desperate thoughts as easily as he takes a book from the library, running his fingers over every tome before he snatches one.

But Charles only swallows him down.

"I haven't forgotten about Schmidt, you know," Charles says later, when he's regaining his breath.

Erik strokes over his ribs. "I know."

"Killing him won't give you what you want."

Erik tightens his grip. "I have what I _want_ already."

"So why bother with him at all?"

"I have to."

"Why?"

"What would you do to the man who killed your mother?"

"I'm not sure. I don't think I ever had a mother." Charles goes still for a long time, his breaths long and even. Erik thinks he's gone to sleep until he says, "If you're going to defeat Schmidt, you'll need help."

Erik looks up at him. "You'll help me?"

Charles looks very old in the dim light. "As much as you ask."

\+ + +

"You'll also need to practice," Charles says over breakfast.

"I have been practicing."

"You've been struggling."

"I've been effective."

"You've almost gotten yourself killed."

The chandelier overhead rustles, but Erik remains calm. "What do you suggest?"

Charles' smile is otter playful. "A little change in motivation."

\+ + +

He's shaking when he fucks Charles that night, terrified that he's going to tear him apart.

There's so much power thrumming through him, more spilling out with every thrust, because it's nothing like anger and it feels so _perfect_. He needs to use it or it will consume him, and the only thing he can think that's better than what he has now is if Charles were bound to him just as he wanted, for as long as he wanted.

Charles stares as the headboard melts into twin tendrils that start to curl around his wrists. "Erik."

"Relax." _I won't hurt you, I promise_. "I know what I'm doing."

Charles sighs. "That's not what I'm worried about."

 _What are you worried about?_ Erik melts the metal of the head board to his will, lets it curl around Charles' wrists and ankles lazily, pinning his hands down and lifting his legs, spreading him wide. _Tell me, and I'll destroy it._

Charles looks so afraid. Anger boils up at that, because he's _told_ Charles he wouldn't hurt him, he'd promised.

"If you want me to stop," he reminds Charles tightly, "then make me stop."

Charles tests the bonds—breath hitching when they don't budge. Is he surprised? Did he really think Erik was playing?

Erik could keep him here forever, in the palm of his hand.

Charles isn't in the water now, in a new body and a new land, and he may have all that power in his mind but Erik has his own methods of persuasion, ruthlessly effective.

"Stop me," he dares, because Charles could do it. Charles is the most powerful thing he's ever met, and he's trapped and pinned and all Erik's—only Erik's—for as long as he wants him.

Charles doesn't stop him; he grips the metal curved around his wrists and rides out every thrust, lips bitten white. He jerks forward as he comes, hides his face against Erik's neck, nuzzling blindly until Erik gives in and holds him, curls pink marks into his shoulders and loses himself in the briny smell of him.

\+ + +

Afterwards, Charles strokes the newly reformed headboard.

"I could stop Schmidt, you know. With my mind. If you asked."

"I want to do it myself."

"I want that too." Charles turns his hands to Erik instead. "You have such a beautiful gift, Erik."

 _I know_ , Erik thinks, watching him. Charles is so painfully beautiful, powerful and brilliant and accepting, pulling Erik towards him, letting Erik arrange them as he wants until he's sprawled over Charles, his head over Charles' heart, a protective barrier.

He'd assumed, when Charles had asked him to close his eyes and clear his mind, that Charles intended to go into it. But Charles had asked him to talk instead: small things first, flowers and fresh bread, things he barely remembered or had never paid attention to in the first place. He can't remember now when they turned to his mother, the warm glow of the menorah -- only that the satellite had turned on its axis easy as turning a doorknob.

"See, you can talk," Charles had said, as though he was even prouder of that than the satellite. His smile was a ripe peach.

There's still a hint of it now, as he sleeps, his lips a little curled.

Charles drops off to sleep almost instantly, but Erik stays awake a while longer, listening to his heartbeat—unique and fragile and magical—the rhythm of a man who's been thoroughly fucked and held. The bedsprings purr as Erik thinks about Charles sleeping like this forever, about kissing him awake after he's slept a thousand years in Erik's arms.

Erik has never considered the power of contentment.

\+ + +

Since Erik was a child, the rest of the world has wanted to destroy him for being what he is.

They'd destroy Charles too, if they were to win.

But Erik is ready to meet them now, with all of this new power he's unlocked, with Charles and his brilliant mind at his side. Schmidt and his human minions will never see them coming.

They don't stand a chance.

\+ + +

It's a beautiful day when he finds Schmidt; the sky is as clear as the water. Erik feels like he could drag up a fleet, twist them all into the little toy ships he used to play with before the war.

"Wish me luck," he tells Charles before he leaves him on the beach. It's odd to prepare to dive into the water while he leaves the sea creature on the shore—not that you'd ever know Charles used to live under the waves.

"You don't need it." Charles has to struggle to let him go. "You don't need any wishes at all."

Easy enough for Charles to say, who could stop a man like Schmidt with a wish in his direction. Erik wants to do this on his own, but it's comforting, to know for the first time there's someone else he can turn to, someone he can ask for help. "Stay close. I may call for you."

"If that's what you want."

If it weren't time for war, he would ask Charles to smile. But it is, so he tells him to stay out of sight.

He pulls the submarine out easily, tosses it onto the beach hard enough to rattle it. Schmidt's chosen soldiers advance on him, already stumbling from the blow of the submarine.

Erik takes care of them as neatly as he took care of everyone else on his list.

Then he goes to find Schmidt.

\+ + +

Schmidt is not older than Erik remembers, but he's smaller, paler, _American_. He welcomes Erik with open arms, tells Erik to join him.

Erik blasts the room apart.

Schmidt retaliates with a blast of his own—propels Erik onto the beach and down into the sand. The pain is everywhere, deafening and smoky. He can't concentrate, can't feel rage or calm or anything but agonizing, endless pain. The metal is gone, beyond his ability right now.

All he can manage is, _Charles_.

More pain.

"Charles, _please_." It's the first time he's begged for anything.

The power emanating from Schmidt ceases immediately. Erik stands slowly, unable to hear anything but the ringing in his ears.

Schmidt has gone completely still, Pygmalion in reverse.

Erik does what he came to do.

Schmidt crumples along with the coin. Erik blinks at his pallid body, blood puddling sluggishly by his head.

His own hands have gone pale too, he notices dimly. He turns back to Charles as if waking from a poison and unnatural sleep.

Charles is flat on his back, panting with pain and completely still, like he's been paralyzed.

Erik runs to him, gathers him into his arms immediately, holds him like he did in the boat, once upon a time. Schmidt's lackeys are all hanging nearby warily, but cower when he roars at them, making the submarine shake threateningly. He will crush every one of them if they come near him, he will _find_ whoever did this to Charles and make him _suffer_.

"Erik, stop!"

He lets go of the submarine, looks down at Charles, who's clutching his arm, his mouth trembling even as he tries to force it into a straight line of resolve. Erik aches with how much he wants him. "Tell me who did this to you," he whispers fervently, "I'll kill them, Charles, I'll make sure they never hurt you again, just—"

Charles shushes him with a brush of fingers over his lips, and says hoarsely, "I must be going now, and I think we have spent enough time talking about revenge."

"You're leaving me?"

Charles wipes his thumb gently under Erik's eyelid, lingers on the crows' feet next to his eyes. "I had hoped I could hold out longer."

"What do you mean? Is someone making you go back? Tell me who it is and I'll destroy them, Charles, I promise, tell me and I will."

"Erik." Charles' eyes are wet, luminous in his bruised face. "You asked."

It doesn't make any sense—he never asked Charles to go, he wants Charles to _stay_ —until it does.

Charles had used his telepathy because Erik had asked him to.

He struggles to remember the last time he had heard Charles in his mind. He'd never considered that telepathy would be as forbidden as swimming. It was as much a part of Charles as his blue eyes, and he still had those. But he hadn't used it before until Schmidt—until Erik had asked him to.

 _That's not fair_ , Erik thinks, so wrenchingly that it shocks him. When had he ever thought the world was fair? But Charles had said he would stay, had promised when everything was dark and so exquisitely painful that Erik had let himself believe it could be real.

Charles had said he would stay. Erik wants him to stay, with a childish insistence he thought had been carved out of him a long time ago. "Don't go. It's not too late."

Charles smiles ruefully, his cheeks trembling with the effort. "I can't feel my legs."

Already they've started to cover over with scales, opalescent and alien, as bloody returning as they had been when he'd shed them. Erik loves them. He would kiss every one of them. He would cut Charles open, if Charles wouldn't do it himself again.

"Stay with me," he begs.

"Oh," Charles says, and he sounds the same as always, weak with loving. "My friend."

And then he cannot say any more.

Erik's mind fractures with the possibility: Charles in a pool just for him, forever; long nights in the water, stroking Charles' scales; feeding him by hand, while Charles watches him with those perfect, unearthly eyes. Charles couldn't stop him, with no legs and no voice, with hands too sea-soft to fight him.

He wouldn't _want_ to fight him.

Charles' eyes are pained. Erik has hurt him, even after he'd made his own promises in the dark.

Erik picks him up and takes him to the water's edge, lets Charles slip out of his arms, into the waves. He disappears without a glance backward, easy and elegant and gone forever. Erik can't remember anymore what he told him with words and what he told him with thoughts Charles never heard, but it doesn't matter anymore.

He should have known from the beginning.

He is far too old for fairy tales.


End file.
